[backintown]

Whereas most religions actively seek to recruit people to share their beliefs and to belong in their communities, this one screens out and often forbids people from joining their faith on the sole basis of genetic ancestry and ethnic background. Who can get away with this kind of behavior these days? Isn’t this blatant racial discrimination? I wonder why/how this doesn’t even raise an eyebrow in our media.

Membership of this highly selective club (0.2% of the world population) must carry its benefits…

Interesting related article by the British magazine The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21593507-competing-answers-increasingly-pressing-question-who-jew

[backintown]

What an amazing coincidence! Who is going to be nominated to the #2 of the Fed under Yellen? After an extremely careful and totally unbiased selection process, it turned out the most qualified is the former head of the Bank of Israel.

The gentiles need to take a grip and understand they don’t know any of this complicated stuff and let the two percent take care of us all.

[backintown]

While there are regions of the Middle East with a particularly high concentration of wackos, bigots and lunatics, these types of individuals unfortunately can be found everywhere. The Netherlands might not be immune to this, but it is clearly a thriving secular democracy and its government (and presumably its public TV) promotes liberal values having no direct stake in the Middle East. The facts outlined in the Dutch public TV documentary speak for themselves.

To insinuate that the Netherlands is a racist country is ridiculous, especially if compared to Israel which is a state created from the very beginning on the sole basis of a religion (other than the even tinier and citizen-less Vatican, the only in the world I believe) by people fleeing absurd persecution elsewhere. It unfortunately evolved into an apartheid state (heavily subsidized by American taxpayers) practicing some of the same abuses some of these migrants were escaping from.

If the Jerusalem Times article you refer to were right and this tiny minority (<0.3% of the world’s population and ~0.2%% in the Netherlands) faces significant discrimination today even in peaceful and tolerant Holland, there would be even more reason for all to be amazed how it is possible for this group to be so over-represented in so many of the most prestigious spheres of western societies. To be sure, this group did suffer from some barbaric acts in the past, but it doesn’t appear logically possible for them to be doing so amazingly well today if significant discrimination is still taking place. Quite the opposite, the question should be on how it achieves such disproportional power.

For those interested, it is certainly worthwhile reading a book written by Norman Finkelstein (son of Holocaust survivors) called “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering”. The book and the life story of the author after he presented his views are eye-opening.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation/dp/185984488X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381255308&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Holocaust+Industry%3A+Reflections+on+the+Exploitation+of+Jewish+Suffering

[backintown]

For those interested in this topic, it is definitely worthwhile to watch this 2007 documentary by the Dutch Public Television. The Netherlands is generally a country I don’t associate with sponsored prejudice, hatred, bigotry or racism, and is arguably in a fairly neutral position regarding this matter.

http://www.linktv.org/programs/the-israel-lobby

Full version in six parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otrMZ821R64&feature=share&list=PL24EBEB1DE4F5BEEB

[backintown]

I couldn’t agree more, minorities should rise on their own, but it is very difficult if a small clique has a strong hold on the most powerful positions using collective resources to give strong preference in training, grooming and investing to their own. While this fairly small minority might actually have been hurt in the past from this exact issue and has successfully conquered a well deserving a seat on the table, today it seems it wants all the seats on it. It ends up dictating policy on behalf of the whole country and a mirroring clique on the private side (many switch sides at some point) has benefited tremendously from the policies this group has put in place. To be clear, it is not as if this group has absolute control over everything, but for a meager two percent of the population it seems to be amazingly influential.

If you extend the analysis to other areas of policy or levels of government, this group also appears to have completely disproportional power and influence. When I count the number of Assemblymen and Senators in such group, I find it astonishing the huge over representation, especially in the Senate. Again, if say Chinese Americans had even close to such disproportional clout, this wouldn’t go unnoticed especially if they had a powerful lobby in DC and were allowed to dictate American policy towards China, where there is an obvious huge potential for conflicts of interests. So I am left wondering for example if the unbelievable amounts of our tax dollars we spend on the Middle East (even subsidizing a fairly wealthy country with its own nuclear weapons like Israel and brutal dictatorships friendly to it to the tune of several billions every year) and the unending fights we seem to pick with the >1 billion Muslims out there are all justified on their own merits based on American interests or if there is something else behind the surface.

[backintown]

No rant here, it just appears so unbalanced that it catches the attention. It is highly unlikely this would go unnoticed if they were all Italian American (who are way more numerous) or something.

This fairly significant over-representation should be surprising to someone who believes these appointments should be blind to such a variable. After all, how statistically likely are these appointments to be so disproportionally distributed to such a tiny percentage of the population if such a variable plays no role?

I would expect to see more diversity in those ranks. Not a single woman (50% of the population), African-American (13%), Asian American (5%) or Hispanic (17%), ever. I find it especially interesting in contrast to its total lack of representation/interest for some other (arguably much less important) posts such as Secretary of Veteran Affairs or Secretary of Interior (none, ever). Those are the types of posts you historically find some of the token ‘diversity’ appointments to ‘minorities’.

I guess if we have Yellen, we will at least introduce have some gender diversity for a change. Let’s see.

[backintown]

What a bunch of bull…

If there are legal burdens, those have been designed/created (by the brokers themselves) with the sole purpose of enabling them to justify the current MLS setup so that they can continue to suppress competition and overcharge consumers for their services. They set up the barriers in order to sell the access.

Pass along any legal risks to the actual people making the postings like so many websites do and case closed.

I’m doubtful this will ever change though, given the RE industry’s grip on congress. Why else would the government decide that renters (on average poorer) should provide a subsidy (mortgage interest deduction) to homeowners (on average much richer)? No other respectable developed country does that.

[backintown]

What a bunch of bull…

If there are legal burdens, those have been designed/created (by the brokers themselves) with the sole purpose of enabling them to justify the current MLS setup so that they can continue to suppress competition and overcharge consumers for their services. They set up the barriers in order to sell the access.

Pass along any legal risks to the actual people making the postings like so many websites do and case closed.

I’m doubtful this will ever change though, given the RE industry’s grip on congress. Why else would the government decide that renters (on average poorer) should provide a subsidy (mortgage interest deduction) to homeowners (on average much richer)? No other respectable developed country does that.

[backintown]

What a bunch of bull…

If there are legal burdens, those have been designed/created (by the brokers themselves) with the sole purpose of enabling them to justify the current MLS setup so that they can continue to suppress competition and overcharge consumers for their services. They set up the barriers in order to sell the access.

Pass along any legal risks to the actual people making the postings like so many websites do and case closed.

I’m doubtful this will ever change though, given the RE industry’s grip on congress. Why else would the government decide that renters (on average poorer) should provide a subsidy (mortgage interest deduction) to homeowners (on average much richer)? No other respectable developed country does that.

[backintown]

What a bunch of bull…

If there are legal burdens, those have been designed/created (by the brokers themselves) with the sole purpose of enabling them to justify the current MLS setup so that they can continue to suppress competition and overcharge consumers for their services. They set up the barriers in order to sell the access.

Pass along any legal risks to the actual people making the postings like so many websites do and case closed.

I’m doubtful this will ever change though, given the RE industry’s grip on congress. Why else would the government decide that renters (on average poorer) should provide a subsidy (mortgage interest deduction) to homeowners (on average much richer)? No other respectable developed country does that.

[backintown]

What a bunch of bull…

If there are legal burdens, those have been designed/created (by the brokers themselves) with the sole purpose of enabling them to justify the current MLS setup so that they can continue to suppress competition and overcharge consumers for their services. They set up the barriers in order to sell the access.

Pass along any legal risks to the actual people making the postings like so many websites do and case closed.

I’m doubtful this will ever change though, given the RE industry’s grip on congress. Why else would the government decide that renters (on average poorer) should provide a subsidy (mortgage interest deduction) to homeowners (on average much richer)? No other respectable developed country does that.

[Author]

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